


Tell 'em that God's Gonna Cut You Down

by Lutelyre



Category: Naruto
Genre: Anbu Hatake Kakashi, Anbu Shiranui Genma, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Cauterization, Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mutilation, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prisoner of War, Psychological Torture, Scarification, Suffering, Torture, Tumblr Prompt, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019, darker than I originally intended, kakagenma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 18:50:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21286490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lutelyre/pseuds/Lutelyre
Summary: "Genma has put the knife in the fire, heating it carefully on the embers to a dark cherry-red."
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Shiranui Genma
Comments: 21
Kudos: 78





	Tell 'em that God's Gonna Cut You Down

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I'm back with a super quicky drabble! This was written for Whumptober 2019 - the prompt was delirium, but it's got plenty of other whumpy goodness as well, if you're into that sort of thing.
> 
> In other news, I have a fic tumblr now! I made it to try to spur me to participate in whumptober, but i'm having more fun posting random inspo/ideas. It's the same name - Lutelyre. I know no one is on tumbles anymore, but whatever. If you still like to kick around on there, come hang. 
> 
> Poor Kakashi takes a bit of a beating here, warnings in the tags for blood, gore, torture, etc....

Genma has put the knife in the fire, heating it carefully on the embers to a dark cherry-red. 

Kakashi watches him skittishly, eyes darting to the whirling snow outside the makeshift tent, icy flakes spattering through a gap in the heavy canvas flap, and back again to the flames glowing against the slick metal sheen of the blade. 

How did they get here? 

His head is foggy, dark spots over his vision starting to blur Genma into a blotched smear in front of him. Genma’s face is grim, avoiding his gaze. Kakashi breathes in tight, shallow pants, chest straining with the effort it takes to keep his eyelids open, keep his teeth clenched against the pain streaking horridly down his spine where the flesh is torn like a frayed rope, pain heavy like a gluey mass on his face where a gaping wound spreads from the now shredded sharingan eye to his jaw, blood dripping in wormy ribbons down his neck. 

_A small spiked hammer, a delicate little thing really, deceptively sharp and quite well crafted, comes down on his bloody eye, comes down on his face. And again, and again. He screams, chokes on blood that clogs his throat, his nose. He should count himself lucky he’s alive, right? A stinging lash on his back, after the hammer. And again. So lucky. He shouldn’t think about it._

Why are his hands still bound? Why is he still gagged? 

Genma got him out, Genma definitely got him out, right? He remembers Genma’s hands on his own in the pitch darkness of the room he was kept in, fingers stumbling as they tapped a shaky ANBU code against his wrist. Genma pulling him up and forward roughly, Genma shoving Kakashi over his shoulder when he collapsed, jogging hard down an endless corridor—he could smell Genma’s scent thick in the air, the smell of fear laced with salt and sweat and seething with a tightly leashed rage.  
  
Kakashi spasms reflexively at the memory on the cot, pulling fruitlessly against the ties binding his feet to the edges of the thin metal frame and scrabbling at this tightly roped wrists. A muffled groan splits his lips around the heavy bar-gag still pressing insistently against his tongue. 

Genma is by his side in a moment, and his mouth twists. He grips Kakashi’s bound hands and shakes them slightly—brings his face in very close. “Shut _up_ Kakashi. We can’t make a fucking sound, okay?” 

He sounds angry, on a high-alert, mission-sharp focus, but underneath that there’s still the sour curl of fear, the scent of it harsh in Kakashi’s nose, so up-close and personal. “I know it hurts bad, I know, I swear I’m trying to fix it, but you’ve got to be _quiet_.” 

It would be easier if Kakashi could hear him clearly, then maybe this would make more sense, maybe he could piece it together, but every noise comes to him from very far away— the howl of wind outside, the hiss and snap of the fire, Genma’s frantic words. He’s at the bottom of a deep pit, each sound echoing wildly, and every word mixes with all the other voices in his head, jabbering and wailing in a steadily growing cacophony he can barely focus through. Kakashi struggles against Genma’s grip like a child. 

“Wha—Gen—aghh!“ around the toughened gag his tongue struggles to form half-audible words. 

“Shush, shuush,” Genma murmurs, and his palm is tight over Kakashi’s mouth. His thumb presses the ridge of Kakashi’s bobbing adam’s apple briefly, a firm, almost uncomfortable pressure that feels like a warning. Where the fuck is his _mask_? 

Genma should have known to give him a mask immediately, as soon as possible. Genma knows he would want, no he would _need_ one, Genma _knows_ him. He feels newly naked again. The hands are cold on his skin. 

_When they took his mask at the beginning, the very beginning, he’d lifted his chin defiantly and didn’t tremble, because he’d known it would be the first to go. Then they’d laughed at him, and taken everything else too—don’t fucking think about it._

What is happening? The blood on his face is still wet and fresh, his head still throbbing in fat, heady pulses. His whole body is screaming so loudly Kakashi isn’t sure how on earth he’s supposed to shut it up and stay quiet. 

Genma got them out, right? Didn’t Genma get him out? Is he not _out_? He jerks and then stills quite suddenly, like waking from a nightmare. 

He hasn’t seen any other agents wearing bone and black. There’s only Genma. Genma is skittish and weary and _alone_, and why the fuck didn’t Kakashi notice it before? The ANBU code Genma had given him, fingers almost too quick to decipher against Kakashi’s palm in that dank cell—was it the wrong code? 

_Fuck_, he can’t remember, he can’t think— wasn’t it? 

_Because a wrong code has started this, hadn’t it? A slick tap of fingers on his arm noting ‘all clear’ and he’d walked right into the ambush, been taken alive and kicking, and you don’t ever leave your teammates behind but sometimes they leave you, don’t they, huh? Sometimes they leave you for the wolves. Stop thinking about it._

His heart pounds like a drum, adrenaline streaking up his limbs but fading like a dying match before he can rally any chakra to throw off his binds, to snap Genma’s neck, to shove his face into the snow and wait for the pain to end. 

The tiny tent is barely warmed by the flickering flame at its edge, and Genma’s full, soft lips look chapped raw. Dread settling like ice in his veins, Kakashi makes a high keening noise as his vision blotches and smudges again, Genma’s face smearing in front of him like a bad painting. Why can’t he _focus_? 

_Focus was challenging in the cells too, never knowing if it was day or night or somewhere in between, never knowing how much time had passed or not passed or stood still for hours. It seemed like they came for him with no schedule, and waiting made him half-mad. What did time matter, when they had all the time in the world? But he doesn’t have time to go back to that_— 

“Okay, come on, look at me.” Genma is too close again. 

“Are you with me? Look, Kakashi, this is going to be nasty, okay? Are you listening?” Genmas voice is suddenly too low, too soothing, too soft. “This is going to hurt. I need to you to brace yourself.” 

Kakashi forces his eyes open. 

The knife is in Genma’s hand. 

The knife from the fire, the knife that’s glowing bright like a song—a pure, high note in the air—so hot Kakashi can fucking _smell_ the heat curling from its burnished edge, and—no, don’t, why, _stop_— 

_A yell throttles his throat, because he’d never considered it before but hot tongs are really quite ideal to use if you want to be slow when melting bits off of someone, didn’t you know? Eyelids will slough away in a matter of minutes, smaller bones typically tend to sizzle and then crack._

_In a pinch, a hot knife will probably work just as well._

_Don’t think about it, don’t fucking think about it, rip the blade from Genma’s grip and slit his traitorous throat but stop thinking, stop everything now_— 

Kakashi flails, back arching from the cot, seizing and twitching, tied hands coming up to block Genma bearing down on him as the knife spits sparks, but he knows he’s weaker than he’s ever been before, and Genma is an ANBU agent too and a good one, always quick and always deadly.

Genma grips Kakashi’s wrists with one hand and pushes his head roughly to the side, pinning him down to the cot. Without pause, he presses the steaming flat of the blade against the mangled ruins of Kakashi’s sharingan eye. 

Kakashi screams around the gag, the sound breaking over his raw throat and turning soundless, desperate. 

“Aaarhhgg—!” 

“I —_Shit_, I know Kakashi—_fuck me_, It’s okay—” Genma’s voice stays level and low, a rasp scraping across his muttered curse the only sign of acknowledgment as Kakashi struggles uselessly against him. “I’ve got you, but we’ve got to be quiet. You’ve got to be fucking quiet, _please_.” 

Kakashi bucks and twists helplessly, glares up with a blinding, delirious rage through his one good eye, snarling half-formed curses and panting hard and fast. 

“Fff—uck y-you—!” 

Genma grabs a length of bandage that’s within arms reach and shoves it roughly into Kakashi’s mouth around the gag. He keeps his fingers hooked over Kakashi’s lower jaw, holding his face in place like an afterthought. 

Kakashi shudders, tries to snap his teeth, lips curling like a dog. His moaning is more muffled now but constant, his one good eye rolling back in his head. 

“I’ve got you, just hold on, I’ve got you—” Genma’s voice is distant, dark. He works quickly, cauterizing the flesh of Kakashi’s eye and cheekbone, down of the side of his neck and jaw. He ignores the charred smoke and singed hiss of the knife as Kakashi convulses violently, the corded muscles in his neck and veins of his forehead stark and pulsing. 

By the end, Kakashi passes out, only the white of his remaining eye visible under stormy grey eyelashes. His hands grip and clutch at nothing, twitching. 

Genma staggers back, the knife falling from his hand with a clatter. He sits heavily, one shaking hand over his face. 

In a moment, he’ll have to somehow get them both out of the hideaway and to the Leaf ANBU rendezvous point, a full ten miles away. In a moment, he’ll have to finish bandaging Kakashi’s wounds and check to make sure the prison guards patrolling only mere steps away from their chakra-shielded tent are distracted enough by the blizzard to flee undetected. In a moment, he’ll have to face himself. 

Genma feels empty, emptier than he’s felt in a long time. 

“God—Fucking hell.” 

_Don’t think about it ,don’t think about it, don’t think_— 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Should i write more little drabbles? Thinking i might make a collection...


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